- Education is at the centre of the Asian Century White Paper. But do nations that invest more in education grow faster? It seems not.
- We the sheeple: a Freakonomics guide to the US elections. (Thanks Theo.)
- A long neglected subject: the role of Chinese 'experts' advising the Pol Pot regime. (Thanks Milton.)
- A giant leap forward: yes, China is behind the curve in space technology, but not for long.
- Coal is in long-term decline, says this Global Mail article. But in the comments, a link to a Guardian piece suggesting otherwise.
- The gift of migration: how much human capital does Australia get each year?
- The world's first commercial vertical farm is in Singapore. (H/t MR.)
- I did not know this! Yuri Gagarin didn't actually land with his capsule after orbiting the earth in 1961. He parachuted out, Felix Baumgartner-style:
Gagarin’s Vostok capsule used a parachute to land on the ground, but its Soviet designers were not convinced they could bring the capsule down gently enough for the cosmonaut to survive. They were probably right. An eyewitness who happened to see Vostok land is reported to have said, “It fell, then it bounced and then it fell again. There was a huge hole where it hit the first time.” Instead the designers arranged for Gagarin to eject from the reentering capsule at an altitude of 7 km (4.4 miles or 23,000 ft) above the Earth and parachute down to the ground. But, concerned that this flight would not be recognized as a complete flight if the cosmonaut did not land in the capsule, the Soviets kept this fact secret for a decade.